“The Idiot’s Lament”
Her has come
Her has went
Her has left I all alone
Oh, how can it was
— Anonymous
“The Moron”
See the happy moron,
He doesn’t give a damn!
I wish I were a moron–
My God! Perhaps I am!
— Anonymous
Applied Science
William Gladstone once asked Michael Faraday the practical value of electricity.
“Why, sir,” the physicist replied, “presently you will be able to tax it.”
Multiplication Palindromes
12 × 42 = 24 × 21
12 × 63 = 36 × 21
12 × 84 = 48 × 21
13 × 62 = 26 × 31
23 × 96 = 69 × 32
24 × 63 = 36 × 42
24 × 84 = 48 × 42
26 × 93 = 39 × 62
36 × 84 = 48 × 63
46 × 96 = 69 × 64
14 × 82 = 28 × 41
23 × 64 = 46 × 32
34 × 86 = 68 × 43
13 × 93 = 39 × 31
Bird Diapers
You know, bird diapers. What more is there to say?
Bertha Dlugi’s invention, patented in 1959, was intended for parakeets and other birds that are allowed to fly freely about the house. “It is … a general object of the present invention to provide a garment to be worn by birds for receiving their excremental discharge to prevent it from being deposited on household furnishings when the bird is at liberty in the home and thereby avoid the consequent unsanitary condition.”
Good idea — but it’s twice the mess if the cat catches it.
“Coincidence”
In Detroit, year ago, Street Sweeper Joseph Figlock was furbishing up an alley when a baby plopped down from a fourth-story window, struck him on the head and shoulders, injured Joseph Figlock and itself but was not killed. Last fortnight, as Joseph Figlock was sweeping out another alley, two-year-old David Thomas fell from a fourth-story window, landed on ubiquitous Mr. Figlock with the same results.
– Time, Oct. 17, 1938
Wire Act
Performing in Kid Boots in Chicago, Eddie Cantor received a 12-page telegram from Florenz Ziegfeld with suggestions for improving the show. “The whole message [was] such a jumble of ideas” that Cantor simply responded:
YES.
Ziegfeld wrote back:
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YES? DO YOU MEAN YES YOU WILL TAKE OUT THE SONG OR YES YOU WILL PUT IN THE LINES OR YES YOU WILL FIX THAT SCENE OR YES YOU HAVE TALKED TO THOSE ACTORS?
Cantor responded:
NO.
Unquote
“Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful.” — Martin Luther
“How Did It Get There?”
From The Strand, April 1901. R.C. Hardman of Meadhurst, Uppingham, ordered a ton of coal and found a coin dated 1397 embedded in one lump.
If there’s an explanation for this, I can’t find it.
In a Word
hallelujatic
adj. containing hallelujahs
Bereft
If this should meet the eye of Emma D—–, who absented herself last Wednesday from her father’s house, she is implored to return, when she will be received with undiminished affection by her almost heart-broken parents. If nothing can persuade her to listen to their joint appeal–should she be determined to bring their gray hairs with sorrow to the grave–should she never mean to revisit a home where she had passed so many happy years–it is at least expected, if she be not totally lost to all sense of propriety, that she will, without a moment’s further delay, send back the key of the tea-caddy.
– Advertisement, London newspaper, quoted in Jefferson Saunders, The Tin Trumpet, 1836